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HE
BY THE AUTHOR OF
'IT' 'KING SOLOMON'S WIVES' 'BESS'
'MUCH DARKER DAYS' 'MR MORTON'S SUBTLER'
AND OTHER ROMANCES
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1887
All rights reserved
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
'SHE.'
_TO H. RIDER HAGGARD._
_Not in the waste beyond the swamp and sand,
The fever-haunted forest and lagoon,
Mysterious Kor, thy fanes forsaken stand,
With lonely towers beneath the lonely Moon!
Not there doth Ayesha linger,--rune by rune
Spelling the scriptures of a people banned,--
The world is disenchanted! oversoon
Shall Europe send her spies through all the land!_
_Nay, not in Kor, but in whatever spot,
In fields, or towns, or by the insatiate sea,
Hearts brood o'er buried Loves and unforgot,
Or wreck themselves on some Divine decree,
Or would o'er-leap the limits of our lot,
There in the Tombs and deathless, dwelleth SHE!_
DEDICATION.
_KOR_, _Jan._ 30, 1887.
_DEAR ALLAN QUATERMAIN,
You, who, with others, have aided so manfully in the Restoration of
King Romance, know that His Majesty is a Merry Monarch.
You will not think, therefore, that the respectful Liberty we have
taken with your Wondrous Tale (as Pamela did with the 137th Psalm)
indicates any lack of Loyalty to our Lady Ayesha.
Her beauties are beyond the reach of danger from Burlesque, nor
does_ her _form flit across our humble pages.
May you restore to us yet the prize of her perfections, for we, at
least, can never believe that she wholly perished in the place of the
Pillar of Fire!
Yours ever,
TWO OF THE AMA LO-GROLLA._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 1
II. POLLY'S NARRATIVE 12
III. LEONORA'S DISCOVERY 18
IV. THE EQUIPMENT 27
V. DOWN THE DARK RIVER 31
VI. THE ZU 41
VII. AMONG THE LO-GROLLAS 49
VIII. HE 59
IX. THE POWER OF HE 76
X. A BODY IN PAWN 81
XI. THE WIZARD UNBOSOMS 91
XII. THE WIZARD'S SCHEME 97
XIII. THE PERILOUS PATH 103
XIV. THE MAGIC CHAIR 113
XV. THE END 116
HE.
CHAPTER I.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
As I sat, one evening, idly musing on memories of roers and Boers, and
contemplating the horns of a weendigo I had shot in Labrador and the
head of a Moo Cow[1] from Canada, I was roused by a ring at the door
bell.
[1]
A literary friend to whom I have shown your MS. says a
weendigo is Ojibbeway for a cannibal. And why do you shoot
poor Moo Cows?--PUBLISHER.
Mere slip of the pen. Meant a Cow Moose. Literary gent no
sportsman.--ED.
All right.--PUBLISHER.
The hall-porter presently entered, bearing a huge parcel, which had
just arrived by post. I opened it with all the excitement that an
unexpected parcel can cause, and murmured, like Thackeray's sailor-man,
'Claret, perhaps, Mumm, I hope----'
It was a Mummy Case, by Jingo!
This was no common, or museum mummy case. The lid, with the gilded
mask, was absent, and the under half or lower segment, painted all over
with hieroglyphics of an unusual type, and _green_ in colour--had
obviously been used as a cradle for unconscious infancy. A baby had
slept in the last sleeping-place of the dead! What an opportunity for
the moralist! But I am not a collector of cradles.
Who had sent it, and why?
The question was settled by an envelope in a feminine hand, which, with
a cylindrical packet, fell out of the Mummy Case, and contained a
letter running as follows:--
_'Lady Betty's, Oxford._
_'My dear Sir,--You have not forgotten me and my friend Leonora
O'Dolite?_
_'The Mummy Case which encloses this document is the Cradle of
her ancient Race._
_'We are, for reasons you will discover in the accompanying
manuscript, about to start for Treasure Island, where, if anywhere
in this earth, ready money is to be found on easy terms of personal
insecurity.'_
'Oh, confound it,' I cried, 'here's another fiend of a woman sending me
another manuscript! They are always at it! Wants to get it into a
high-class magazine, as usual.' And my guess was correct.
The letter went on:--
'_You, who are so well known, will have no difficulty in getting
the editor of the Nineteenth Century, or the Quarterly Review, or
Bow Bells, to accept my little contribution. I shall be glad to hear
what remuneration I am to expect, and cheques may be forwarded
to_
'_Yours very truly,_
'MARY MARTIN.
'P.S.--_The mummy case is very valuable. Please deposit it at the
Old Bank, in the High, where it will represent my balance._
'M. M.'
Now I get letters like this (not usually escorted by a mummy case)
about thrice a day, and a pretty sum it costs me in stamps to send back
the rubbish to the amateur authors. But how could I send back a
manuscript to a lady already on her way to Treasure Island?
Here, perhaps, I should explain how Mary Martin, as she signed herself,
came to choose _me_ for her literary agent. To be sure, total strangers
are always sending me their manuscripts, but Mrs. Martin had actually
been introduced to me years before.
I was staying, as it happened, at one of our university towns, which I
shall call Oxford, for short--not that that was _really_ its name.
Walking one day with a niece, a scholar of Lady Betty's Hall, we
chanced to meet in the High two rather remarkable persons. One of them
was the very prettiest girl I ever saw in my life. Her noble frame
marked her as the victor over Girton at lawn-tennis; while her
_pince-nez_ indicated the student. She reminded me, in the grace of her
movements, of the Artemis of the Louvre and the Psyche of Naples, while
her thoughtful expression recalled the celebrated 'Reading Girl' of
Donatello. Only a reading girl, indeed, could have been, as she was,
Reader in English Literature on the Churton Collins Foundation.
'Who is she?' I said to my friend, the scholar of Lady Betty's; 'what a
lovely creature she is!'
'Who, _that_?' she replied with some tartness. 'Well, what you can see
in _her_, _I_ don't know. That's Leonora O'Dolite, and the lady with
her is the Lady Superior of Lady Betty's.
'They call them Pretty and the Proctor,' my friend went on, 'as Mrs.
Martin--Polly they call her too--has been Proctor twice.'[2]
[2]
I say, you know, keep clear of improbabilities! No one was
ever old enough to have been Proctor _twice_.--PUBLISHER.
That's all you know about it. Why, I shall bring in a
character old enough to have been Proctor a thousand
times.--ED.
Now nobody could have called Polly bewitching. Her age must really have
been quite thirty-five. I dislike dwelling on this topic, but she was
short, dumpy, wore blue spectacles, a green umbrella, a red and black
shawl, worsted mittens and uncompromising boots. She had also the
ringlets and other attractions with which French Art adorns its ideal
Englishwoman.
At my request, I was introduced; but presently some thirty professors,
six or seven senior dons, and a sprinkling of Heads of Houses in red
and black sleeves came bounding out of University sermon, and gathered
round the lovely Leonora. The master of St. Catherine's was accompanied
by a hitherto Unattached student, who manifestly at once fell a victim
to Leonora's charms.
This youth was of peculiar aspect. He was a member of the nearly
extinct Boshman tribe of Kokoatinaland. His long silky hair, originally
black, had been blanched to a permanent and snowy white by failures in
the attempt to matriculate at Balliol. He was short--not above four
feet nine--and was tattooed all over his dark but intelligent features.
When he was introduced I had my first opportunity of admiring Leonora's
extraordinary knowledge of native customs and etiquette.
'Let me present to you,' said the Master of St. Catherine's, 'the
Boshman chief, Ustani!'
'You 'stonish me!' answered Leonora, with a smile that captivated the
Boshman. It is a rule among the tribes of Kokoatinaland, and in Africa
generally, to greet a new acquaintance with a verbal play on his
name.[3] Owing to our insular ignorance, and the difficulty of the
task, this courtesy had been omitted at Oxford in Ustani's case, even
by the Professors of Comparative Philology and the learned Keeper of
the Museum. From that hour to another which struck later, when _he_
struck too, Ustani was Leonora's slave.
[3]
Is this _bona fide_?--PUBLISHER.
All right, see _She_ (p. 145), Ayesha's elegant pun on Holly.
It's always done--pun, I mean.--ED.
I had no further opportunity of conversing with Leonora and Polly, nor
indeed did I ever think of them again, till Polly's letter and mummy
case recalled them to my memory.
Perhaps for pretty Leonora's sake I did, after all, take up and open
the vast cylindrical roll of MS.[4] in the mummy case. Dawn found me
still reading the following record of unparalleled adventure.[5]
[4]
Don't you think it would stand being cut a little?--PUBLISHER.
We shall see.--ED.
[5]
There is just one thing that puzzles me. Polly and Leonora
have gone, no man knows where, and, taking everything into
consideration, it may be a good two thousand years before they
come back.
Ought I not, then, to invest, _in my own name_, the
princely cheque of the Intelligent Publishers?--ED.